


Beyond the Warp Factor

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6549190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven and B'Elanna are forced to work together to solve the death of an OC crewmate to ensure it doesn't happen again. Bonding ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Warp Factor

**Author's Note:**

> I submitted this for the Strange New Worlds fanfiction contest, but was not chosen as a winner. So I'm putting it here so the effort does not go to waste.

Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres paced her quarters in tight, corkscrew circles to the mournful croon of Harry’s clarinet. She was trying to finish coding a holodeck simulation of the shuttlecraft accident that had caused Ensign Pade’s death a few days ago. The noise distracted her, and guilt tapped at her peripheral consciousness, a steady trip-trap of accusation and judgment. She dropped the datapads so she could cover her ears and not feel the dissonance that made her feel so many different reactions, each one clamoring that she give in and do something about it—whether it was climbing up there and breaking Harry’s clarinet over her knee, falling back on the bed with her eyes closed so she could really and truly listen to his playing, punching something until someone bled, or just collapsing on the floor and crying because what was the use of anything when they were stuck out here, warp engines spinning lightyears through folds of space and time until there was nothing left on which to run.

It was useless to complain. Everybody loved it when Harry had the bridge, when he filled the empty hallways with something more than the eerie homesick silence of perpetual warp. There were whispers too that Harry was Janeway’s favorite, but that was the Captain’s prerogative, wasn’t it? Besides, Harry deserved her favor, if the gossip was true.

B’Elanna sat on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest, letting the noise wash over her, pushing back her memories of Pade’s last distress call, and Harry’s frantic attempts to work through the atmospheric distortion to get a transport lock on her.

His playing was sad, and it didn’t so much distract her from what had happened as force her to dwell on it. She climbed from the bed, resumed her pacing, and tried to keep programming the simulation. The captain would want to know what had caused the crash as soon as possible.

B’Elanna wouldn’t keep her waiting, and so she worked deep into Voyager’s night, long after Harry had ceased his playing.

When morning came, her program was incomplete, and she had nothing to show for her effort. She dropped by the mess hall, and got some coffee from Neelix, drinking it without sweetener or cream, drinking it plain like Janeway, so that the puckering bitterness of it would needle her awake.

Instead, it just made her grumpy as she gulped it down and made a face that sent Neelix scurrying off to find something to make up for it. She didn’t wait for him to return, only hurried to the bridge since she didn’t have much time before she was due in engineering. The simulation would have to wait until she was off duty. They were so lightly staffed—they kept losing too many people. There was no Academy to push another forward to fill their empty spaces.

Tom Paris was already on the bridge, and he smiled at her and waved in greeting. It was only after she had nodded at him that she wondered if she shouldn’t have expressed something more—smiled perhaps? Actually said his name—but her hands had been full, her mouth too as she considered what she was going to say in her morning report to Captain Janeway.

If Tom didn’t like that she was preoccupied, wasn’t that his problem? It wasn’t as if she had been rude and ignored him entirely, unlike some people on the crew. At the same time, she wondered why she was bothered about whether or not Tom was concerned at her lack of greeting. She was allowed to be preoccupied and distracted, wasn’t she?

Hadn’t they just lost someone?

How’d he like to be an empty coffin floating off towards some anonymous class two nebula in the middle of the Delta Quadrant? And if she didn’t figure out why it had happened the likelihood that it would happen to someone else was pretty good so if he did have a problem he could just deal with it.

By the time Janeway gave the order to enter her ready room, B’Elanna had already forgotten about Tom. She didn’t care, she had decided, and she had too many other things to think about.

Janeway was already accompanied by Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Tuvok. They must have been discussing Harry’s playing last night because Tuvok was saying, “He should put more effort into expanding his repertoire. There are some excellent pieces that blend traditional Vulcan melodies with the early twentieth century jazz from Harlem.”

Chakotay smiled at Tuvok. “High praise, coming from you.”

Janeway was listening to them as she draml her morning coffee.

“If I can interrupt,” B’Elanna said. “I need to get to engineering after I give my report to the Captain.”

Chakotay and Tuvok excused themselves, and when they were alone, Janeway said. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

Her report was brief, as she still had no idea what had caused the shuttle to crash. She had confirmed that the shuttle was in good working order according to the diagnostic they had run prior to the mission. The planet had also not triggered the crash. All the data recorded from the logs fell within normal parameters for a planet of that class and size. “I should have the simulation ready by tomorrow at the latest. We should know more then.” She ordered the datapads in her hands so they were stacked neatly on top of the other as she waited for Janeway’s dismissal.

“How are you doing, B’Elanna?” Janeway’s voice was soft and concerned as she rose to her own personal replicator and ordered another cup of coffee, black, that she handed to B’Elanna.

“I’m alive,” she said bluntly. “So that counts for something I suppose.”

Janeway shook her head. “You are Chief Engineer. It is your job to delegate inane duties such as fetching some dilithium crystals from a planet.”

B’Elanna felt herself flushing and tried to hide it by drinking deeply from her cup of coffee. It was even more bitter than the stuff Neelix had given her. “I don’t feel guilty,” B’Elanna said. It wasn’t entirely true, of course, but she didn’t feel like getting into a dialogue with the captain about it. Guilt, of course, used to be something that she carried with her all the time. Guilt if something happened in engineering and someone got hurt. Guilt that she wasn’t able to be with her Maquis friends, and then later guilt that they were dead and she was not. Guilt was with her still, of course, because she had been the one that had assigned Pade to the duty mission that had gotten her killed, but if she tried hard enough, she could pretend that the guilt was just a blur just over there somewhere else, instead of something that clawed into her shoulders all the way through her heart. “I just want to figure this out so it doesn’t happen again.”

The Captain raised her hand in that small flourish she was so fond of using. “Then dismissed, Lieutenant.”

She went to the turbolift and waited until she was quite alone before she leaned back and let the datapad fall against her chest. The lights blipped and flickered as the computer responded to her request for engineering. Never in her life had she thought would stand in a lift, just like this one, on a starship just as fine as Voyager, not when she was struggling through the Academy, and especially not when she was on the run as a Maquis. Even now, in these small moments when she wasn’t trying to save the ship, when she wasn’t pushing her friends away, when she wasn’t trying to just survive into the next day, she still had trouble believing that she was really here, that she was a lieutenant who had skipped the rank of ensign, that this ship had been her home for the past four years, and that it would probably be the only home she would ever know because for all of Captain Janeway’s resolute will to get this ship home, she didn’t have that kind of faith in anybody.

The computer alerted her that she had arrived on the engineering level, and she opened her eyes, and made sure her uniform looked straight and neat enough. She ran her fingertips over her rank pips to ensure they were ordered just so. She wouldn’t have cared about the manner of her appearance years ago, but it was important now. She shut the thought out. There were too many important things to consider, like how to keep this ship running in proper order long enough to get them home or, barring that, without exploding and killing everyone on board.

But how she loved this ship. She ran her hands along the smooth pane of glistening silver finish delineating Voyager’s sectors. She felt the warm thrum of engines beneath her palm. This ship really was alive—she knew it, and Voyager knew it, and her captain knew it. But it was only still just one little starship.

Seven of Nine had reached engineering before her, and B’Elanna felt herself almost immediately nettled. Astrometrics was her official duty post, but here she was, slotting herself at a console like it was some kind of regeneration alcove, as if she still belonged here, as if she still fit here, the Borg drone that nobody anticipated would be able to transition from collective to community, the automaton misfit that had a bedside manner rivaling that of the Doctor before he had upgraded himself with all those subroutines.

She stood with her back towards B’Elanna, her posture tall and straight, a silhouette carved from the glowing blue heart of the warp core, her whole body still except for the light tapping of her fingers against the control console.

She wore her blue suit today, and B’Elanna wondered when the captain was going to make her wear a uniform after she had shoved her and all her Maquis companions into Starfleet attire. Bitter pettiness and miserable relief strung through B’Elanna in equal measures. It wasn’t fair, but at least they hadn’t been marked as outsiders or worse, enemies, that horrible simulation in the holodeck notwithstanding.

Not like Seven in her skin tight borg suit marking her as someone not part of Voyager’s crew.

A lump rose in her throat which B’Elanna resolutely swallowed down as she pushed herself beside Seven of Nine, her arm sliding against Seven’s as she felt her weight shift and give way to B’Elanna’s presence. It would have almost seemed like deference if B’Elanna hadn’t known better. Seven was too proud, thought she knew too much from her time with the Borg, every bit of it stolen, taken, ripped from another person’s experience. She might know, but that didn’t mean she understood.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in astrometrics?” she asked.

Seven’s gaze fixated on her momentarily before returning her attention back to the console. B’Elanna shifted so that her torso blocked her line of sight. Almost imperceptibly, Seven sighed, and something like exasperation flickered across her face. B’Elanna was good at breaking through that unbreakable Borg façade of nothingness. But then, she had always been good at getting under people’s skins. Everyone had told her so, even at the academy. B’Elanna feigned surprise as she put her hand over her heart. “Acting emotionally? Isn’t that a little below you?”

“Hardly,” Seven said, though she failed to elaborate what exactly she meant by it, meaning B’Elanna could not return in kind. It aggravated B’Elanna. For someone so focused on specificity, Seven could be infuriatingly cryptic.

B’Elanna turned back to the console. Seven had been looking at the data from the crash site, specifically the holo program she had been working on to recreate the crash. Nothing looked tweaked with some of that infamous Borg ingenuity. “So why are you here?”

“I thought I would assist in your investigation as I noticed that Vorik had been sent to his quarters under the Doctor’s orders, leaving you short-staffed. I requested that I take his place for the time being. Captain Janeway agreed.”

B’Elanna nodded her head to the rhythm of Seven’s stilted dialogue, fingers drumming the rail that guarded the warp core as she wondered why nobody had bothered to notify her about this or even to ask whether or not she wanted help. Briefly, she wondered if it had been in the reports she had summarily skimmed earlier that morning, and again came the familiar sting of guilt and shame and inadequacy that she resolutely buried under rising righteous indignation and irritation toward Seven of Nine. “I don’t know why you bothered. It’s not like you have a personal invested interest in determining the reason of Pade’s death. Not like you would care that someone from Voyager died.”

Seven inclined her head in that smug self-satisfied way of hers, something she would no doubt deny if B’Elanna were ever to tell her so. Borgs aren’t emotional, Lieutenant. Borgs don’t lose their self-control, Lieutenant. Borgs don’t grieve, Lieutenant.

B’Elanna could still hear them, hear the varied voices of the Borg speaking as one. Resistance is futile. We will adapt. It still made her skin crawl. It still made her feel so afraid. It still made her feel like such a coward. It made her hate that she had been the one to delegate the task of retrieving the crystals to Pade instead of just doing it herself.

“I don’t need your help, Seven. Even if I did, I wouldn’t ask for it.”

“And yet you have it.”

“So it would seem,” B’Elanna said as she continued to review the data Seven had been working on. Seven settled in beside her, as if she had never even been pushed aside. Her wrist brushed against the cuff of B’Elanna’s uniform. Jealousy stickled her, a familiar prick that never seemed to scar thick enough so she wouldn’t feel it.

“You seem troubled, Lieutenant,” Seven said after an interval.

B’Elanna bit her tongue and ignored her.

“I find that negative emotions inhibit your general ability to function to your full potential. Perhaps you are too close to this, as the Doctor would say.”

“You seem to have given my wellbeing a lot of thought.” B’Elanna tried to keep her voice as distant and boring as possible. Sometimes she wondered if Seven didn’t get some kind of satisfaction from provoking her.

“No more so than I have given to any other member of the crew.” Seven was quiet for a moment, her fingers nimble across the control panel as she reviewed one of the calculations B’Elanna had made. The metal Borg implant curled around her fingertips and, for a moment, B’Elanna wondered if it would feel warm to the touch or if it would be cold. “You’re upset that I’m here and, I think, hoping that I’ll take it personally. I won’t because I understand that your quickness to anger is a symptom of your individuality, just as the captain’s hypocrisy and sense of self-righteousness, combined with her great sense of purpose, is hers.”

B’Elanna paused working to stare at Seven. Her head was inclined downwards so she could read the data scrolling across the panel. It lit her with a dim blueness, glinting off the mechanical Borg implants still on her face. “I’m sorry, but was that supposed to be your idea of sympathy?”

“It was not meant to be anything but a statement of the facts. If you found another meaning in them then I hope it was to your liking.”

“Unbelievable.” B’Elanna felt her face twist in that way Tom Paris said made her look so unattractive, and she wondered again why she should care how she appeared to another (besides the fact it was now demanded of her as chief engineer and as a member of Captain Janeway’s senior staff). But this was something different, and she wondered, for a brief moment, what Seven saw when she deigned to spare her a single glance before once more putting all her attention to the work before her. She had seen the way Seven reacted to people who became angry with her—that she treated them with the same deference, the same cold detachment. Nothing that was said seemed to change her feelings towards something, whether towards something resembling dislike or something like fondness. It was like talking to a blank wall. “You shouldn’t say that about Captain Janeway,” she said. “She’s the captain.” If anyone had heard her say those things, she would be reprimanded. She could already hear Chakotay saying that Janeway deserved their utmost respect because of that row of pips along her collarbone indicating her rank, putting everyone in their place. And maybe he would have been right, because Janeway had done so much for her, for them all, had believed in them so much—enough to give second and third and fourth chances, even if someone didn’t deserve it. But then other times—

“I have finished here,” Seven said, almost abruptly. “Unless you are in further need of my assistance, I will report back to my post in astrometrics.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” B’Elanna muttered as she left.

“That would be impossible, Lieutenant,” Seven said without looking over her shoulder as the doors slid shut behind her.

**#**

Seven of Nine (Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01) stood patiently as she waited for the lift to bring her to the bridge so that she might meet with the captain in her ready room. She was alone with her thoughts, and she inhaled a slow breath, copying a meditation technique that Lieutenant Tuvok had shown her shortly after she had been severed from the collective. Of course, she had already been familiar with the technique as the Borg had assimilated a number of Vulcans, and their experiences and knowledge were her own as well. Still, there had been something soothing performing it in Tuvok’s company. She had not quite felt so alone, and Tuvok had not felt the need to interrupt their unity of purpose with something so distracting and fractious as small talk or other inane discourse that held no interest or relevance.

The doors slid back and she stepped onto the bridge. Commander Chakotay looked over his shoulder and then returned his attention to the command console after nodding her a quiet greeting. Tom Paris was there as well, lounging in his seat at the helm. Ensign Kim’s duty post was held by someone she did not recognize.

She cut across the bridge, and alerted Captain Janeway to her presence outside her ready room. At the captain’s order to enter, she passed quickly through and stood at attention. Captain Janeway was drinking from a small teacup, something that she had described once as being lucky, a figure of speech Seven did not quite understand. Seven had asked why the Captain drank black coffee from a teacup, and Janeway had said she hadn’t known why but that it just felt right.

Seven of Nine hadn’t quite understood, but the information was not significant or relevant, so she had not pursued the matter.

“Report,” Captain Janeway said. She leaned back in her chair in a way that could almost be casual.

“Lieutenant Torres and I made little headway in determining the reason for Lieutenant Pade’s shuttle to malfunction.” Seven chose not to add that the reason for their lack of progress was entirely Torres’ fault. “However, while reviewing the data, I believe I found a way to increase the efficiency of the rest of our shuttles’ shields, in order to prevent another unfortunate event as what has already transpired.”

“What did Lieutenant Torres think of your suggestions?” Janeway gazed up at her over her folded hands, a small smile on her face, a micro-expression that Seven of Nine had learned to recognize but whose significance remained lost on her.

She wondered if Captain Janeway already knew she had not asked Lieutenant Torres. “I chose not to advise her.”

“Ah,” Janeway said, confirming her suspicions that she had already known. “You can’t come to me whenever you want to escape a conversation with Lieutenant Torres, Seven.”

“She is intractable and unreasonable. Her feelings about what happened with Lieutenant Pade have made her even more so,” Seven said. “It would have been a waste of time.”

Janeway stood, cradling the teacup, sloshing with coffee, in her hand. She paced towards the window, streaked with stars as they hurtled through space towards home, a sentiment that Seven could not share. Voyager was her home, not Earth. “It’s not a waste of time. It is an opportunity to forge a working relationship with each other. We need that now more than ever.”

“She doesn’t want one with me.”

“That’s not up to her—or to you for that matter.” She turned to face Seven, her feet shoulder width apart, Voyager’s light glinting across her rank, that long row of pips. But she was missing one, and Seven wondered where she had lost it. “It’s just us, out here, in this ship. We can’t afford to allow personal feelings fracture us. We need to be whole, cohesive—a functioning collective.” She smiled when she said it.

“Being an individual requires disagreement with each other,” Seven said, thinking of the way Torres and Tom worked together, wondering why Torres welcomed his fractious presence yet consistently pushed her away when they fought. It was especially confusing because Torres always seemed to start it, like she wanted discord as an excuse to terminate their meeting or their conversation. “It requires choosing which relationships to make and which to avoid.”

“And if you’d rather avoid B’Elanna when you’re off duty that’s fine with me,” Janeway said. “But avoiding her when you have an idea about increasing the efficiency of our shuttle fields? That’s on duty business and you need to follow rank instead of going above her head.”

Seven wanted to respond. Wanted to point out that, without rank of her own, technically she had no place and no option but to give way to every individual on Voyager who would inevitably outrank her. She glanced down at her feet, and saw the Captain’s missing pip nearly under her boots. She bent to pick it up, and held it out towards the Captain. “I believe this fell from your collar.”

Janeway smiled went to her. “I was wondering where that went. Help me?” She turned so that Seven had a better reach to reattach the pip. Her knuckles grazed the captain’s neck as she pinned the pip in place, straightening it so it aligned with the others just so. “Was there anything else, Seven?”

She considered again broaching the topic of a uniform. It could either be blue or gold, she reasoned, as her work in astrometrics indicated blue would be the better choice, but what she could offer engineering required blue shoulders. Once, when she had been newly severed from the Borg Collective, she had requested a uniform to more clearly delineate her purpose and her station, but Janeway had refused, as it would be too easy of her to fall back into a Borg way of thinking instead of like an individual. And if she did, by chance, show up wearing a Voyager uniform, she could already see Torres rolling her eyes, muttering something negative about her thinking she was one of them, no matter how many times she had said that Voyager was her collective now (we’re not a collective, Torres had once corrected her, we’re anything but that). “I have nothing else,” she said.

“Then dismissed.” Captain Janeway returned to her desk but paused for a moment. “Let me know if Lieutenant Torres wants to pursue those shield improvements.”

“I will, Captain,” Seven said even though she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to broach the subject.

Since her presence was not desired in Engineering and her duty post in astrometrics was not due for another several hours, Seven had some time to spare. She would, perhaps, take advantage of today’s lunch in the mess hall as well. The Doctor had prescribed she begin taking nutrients via the form of food. Much of what Neelix concocted she disliked as the array of flavor overwhelmed her. Today, though, he had pandered to a request from either Tom Paris or Ensign Kim, and she had heard that a dish called macaroni and cheese was on today’s menu.

The Doctor had assured that it was mild and bland, that it was something she could possibly enjoy—as much as she could enjoy anything, he had added almost to himself though she had heard the sentiment clearly, as he must have known she would.

The mess hall was mostly empty when she arrived. She saw that Ensign Kim was up and about, though she knew that humans in their unenhanced biological state required at least eight hours of sleep in order to function at peak efficiency. Perhaps he could not sleep because of the shuttle incident ending with Lieutenant Pade’s death.

She sat a little ways from him, near enough not to be rude as so many described her actions, but far enough away to discourage small talk. She had no energy for it after her conversation with Lieutenant Torres and Captain Janeway.

The macaroni and cheese that Neelix brought to her was sufficient in the nutrients it provided. The texture, however, left much to be desired as it felt slimy in her mouth. At least she was distracted from the irritation of having to feed herself as she reviewed the many duties demanding her attention in both astrometrics and engineering. Lieutenant Torres had evidently relented to accept her assistance in engineering as she had sent a list of duties to Seven’s datapad. Most of these duties required her to run ceaseless, monotonous simulations on the holodeck beginning tomorrow morning. If Torres thought that would deter or discourage her from her assignments, she was mistaken.

Once Seven had finished reading her assignments, she put it aside and forced herself to continue eating. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ensign Kim with his head bowed. It was strange and unsettling to see Harry so affected. She thought the Doctor would tell her to join him and to attempt to cheer him up, but Seven knew she would only make it worse.

So she left.

Halfway to astrometrics, she turned back around towards the turbolift and directed it to take her to the holodeck so she could peruse the social exercises the Doctor had coded. He had programmed so many that Seven was certain she could find something that would help her with Lieutenant Torres.

**#**

Meanwhile, B’Elanna went to the holodeck, intent on already beginning the simulations she had scheduled for tomorrow. In truth, she hadn’t expected to finish the program today, but sometimes she still managed to surprise herself with how quickly she could accomplish something once she set her mind to it, especially since she had been told so many times she wouldn’t accomplish anything with her life.

Unfortunately, Holodeck One was already in commission even though she had reserved the last open slot of the day for herself. Holodeck Two was still undergoing repairs, to everyone’s dissatisfaction. But B’Elanna had told them once if not a thousand times that what came first—a holodeck or the warp core? A holodeck or the investigation into the unfortunate death of a crewman?

“Computer,” she said, “who is using Holodeck One?”

“Seven of Nine.”

B’Elanna cursed and swore as she went onto the deck. Was she going to run into Seven everywhere today? Did Seven have no other duties that didn’t include being a perpetual thorn in her side?

She wondered what sort of program Seven could possibly be running. A stilted social exercise concocted by the Doctor? The interior of a Borg cube? Something to do with Omega, a program that Seven continued to run even after the Captain had advised her to cease and desist.

But that was Seven, able to get away with anything. Not held to the same standards as the rest of the crew. Treated with less suspicion than the Maquis had been.

At first glance, it looked like Seven wasn’t running any program. The sloping walls were pale white with ribs of silver power relays running through them. There was only Seven standing beside a full length mirror in a Starfleet regulation uniform, the shoulders flashing from blue to gold to blue again.

Seven caught sight of B’Elanna almost immediately, and she called out, just as quickly, “Computer, terminate program.” With a whisper of white noise, Seven stood in her regular suit, blue and fraying at the hems. “Isn’t it polite to knock before you enter?”

“I reserved the hour for me—you’re not even supposed to be here.”

“You were late to your appointment,” Seven said. “I was next in line on the chart.”

B’Elanna ordered the computer to bring up the simulation she had finished. “Take it from me, Seven, don’t be in too much of a hurry to put on that uniform. Savor it while it lasts.”

Seven peered curiously around her as the interior of Pade’s shuttle materialized. “I thought we had agreed to run this simulation tomorrow?”

“That was when I thought I would finish programming it tomorrow,” B’Elanna said.

Seven folded her hands behind her back. “You were going to run it without me.”

“Like we were going to figure out what happened the first time around?” B’Elanna closed her eyes, squeezed them shut until stars popped like going into warp. “Can you just leave me alone?”

“You were the one that intruded on me,” Seven said. “You broke holodeck etiquette.”

B’Elanna huffed as she took the pilot seat, keying in the coordinates that were on record, playing the role of Pade though this time it probably wouldn’t end in anybody’s untimely death.

“I will stay and assist you. The Doctor says that shared experience helps people understand each other,” Seven said as she seated herself in the copilot’s seat.

B’Elanna scoffed. “Last I checked, I was never Borg. Nor did I ever assimilate anyone. Nor did I ever betray the ship and the crew, your so-called collective now.”

“That was one time when I was newly severed—lost and confused and angry at the choices that had been made for me without my permission,” Seven said, her voice quiet. “It is not a choice that I have acted upon since.”

“We’re not the same. We’re not even similar. For example, I feel bad about what happened to Pade. You just see another task to perform and complete with as much efficiency as possible. Maybe you see another puzzle to solve. But you’re more indignant that I was going to start without you than the fact that someone’s dead.”

“You were a stranger and an outsider when you were brought on board,” Seven said. “You were also considered the enemy at one time. You also never completed the academy, yet you are a Starfleet Lieutenant.”

“I’m not a Starfleet Lieutenant, Seven. I’m a Lieutenant on Voyager—that’s all. Starfleet is going to strip me of the rank when I get back just before they put on trial for crimes committed as a Maquis,” B’Elanna said. “It’s not real, Seven. It’s just something out here to make things easier, to preserve Janeway’s authority and the hierarchy of command. Otherwise, there’d be chaos.”

Seven failed to reply and the silence stretched uncomfortably thin between them. “You know that Kess never had a uniform? Neelix doesn’t have one. It doesn’t mean anything—they were still just as much a part of the crew, of Voyager, as me or—” she stopped herself before she could include Seven in the sentiment, confused that the word “you” had almost slipped out.

Seven deigned to bestow a single glance at her with one raised eyebrow. It was her judgy stare and B’Elanna bit her tongue. Seven always succeeded in drawing her out. She wished she could perfect a stone-cold silence, a shoulder so chilly and so forbidding no one would try to goad her.

But her temper was too hot for that, no matter how hard she tried to control herself. It made her so frustrated. Why was it always so hard? Why was she always fighting herself day in and day out, more tired from that than any duty assignment Chakotay or Janeway could throw at her.

“I have no designation here that makes sense,” Seven said. Her gaze was focused on the holographic consoles in front of her. “With the Borg, I was Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct Unimatrix 01. There was purpose and meaning with my name. Now I’m Seven of Nine, or just Seven. I am one individual who was once Borg, but there are not eight others. I am one, but also Seven. I am alone but I am not alone.”

“So you think that having a rank of your own and a uniform of your own would fix that?”

“It would contextualize me as part of the crew. The rest of the crew maintains their individuality. I don’t see why it would be any different for me.”

B’Elanna didn’t know what to say to that. If Seven wanted to wear a Starfleet uniform, then she should just wear one (just like she had been able to keep wearing her Maquis uniform, right?). Before she could stop herself, a bitter snort of a laugh escaped her. “Like I said, don’t be in such a hurry to get into that uniform, Seven.” She still had her old Maquis things hidden in a drawer in her quarters, but she hadn’t taken them out for months. It didn’t feel right somehow, not when they had all died without her.

In the holo program, the shuttle began to buck. Her teeth jarred in her mouth and pain stabbed between her eyes as her neck whiplashed. Nothing serious enough for the safety protocols to protect her from it, but just enough to be uncomfortable.

“I think I have located the issue,” Seven said.

It would just figure for Seven to find what had happened on the first try. “There was an infection in the fuel cells.” She tapped the consoles and a magnified image appeared in the center of the ship. “When it connected with the energy of the planet’s sun, it accelerated the virus, waking it from a dormant stage, which is also why our sensors scans failed to see it when the ship returned from whatever planet infected it. There wasn’t really anything she or we could have done to save her life. The energy from the planet’s atmosphere interfered with our teleportation abilities, which we knew going in.”

“And had dismissed since it was an M class planet.” B’Elanna slumped in her chair after ordering the simulation to pause. She gripped the armrests of her chair with her fists, trying to ride the roiling anger and anxiety in her belly.

Even though the longer they survived in the Delta Quadrant, the more their sensors adapted to the myriad forms of life, it wasn’t enough. Today, she could teach the sensors to recognize this particular form of life, this particular virus, but there would always be something else, another biological life form that would slip by the sensors because they weren’t calibrated to recognize it for what it was.

To go where no one had gone before. To die where no one had died before. Which wasn’t true, of course, because it wasn’t as if the entire Delta Quadrant were unpopulated. It had its own life, its own civilizations. Living and dying weren’t strangers to the Delta Quadrant—only Voyager and her crew were. She was certain that there were many people in the Delta Quadrant who were familiar with the virus, had perhaps even discovered ways to counteract it.

But not Starfleet. She almost asked Seven if the Borg were aware of the virus (could Seven have fed the data into their sensors months and months before?) but at the last second she realized she really, really didn’t want to know.

“You’re angry,” Seven said.

“Brilliant observation.” B’Elanna’s eyes snapped open, nearly blinded by the bright holographic lights. Her vision blurred and blotched as her eyes readjusted to the light.

Seven didn’t pursue the topic, but instead accessed a control panel that allowed her to tap into the sensor databank. B’Elanna watched her upload the data they had recovered so that the sensors would recognize it the next time they encountered the virus.

Her back was towards B’Elanna and she sat straight as she always did, her legs splayed a little from the chair because she was too tall to sit there comfortably. Her shoulders sloped forwards as her fingers tapped the consoles. The muscles in her neck were outlined under the skin, as if she were constantly flexing, constantly at attention.

Then she was humming, humming the sad song that Harry had composed last night on the bridge. B’Elanna knew that she and the Doctor sang (when pressured to do so by him, of course), but she hadn’t realized that she had listened to Harry’s music or that she had paid any attention to it.

“I didn’t know you listened to Harry’s music,” B’Elanna said. “Didn’t think you’d care for it or find it relevant.”

“He plays with mathematical concepts in interesting way. I think he should record his work,” Seven said, as she closed out of the sensor system. “A harmony would improve upon the original.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” B’Elanna said, though it didn’t come of as sarcastic as she had hoped or feared it would.

“I’m perfectly capable of telling him myself if I so desired.” Seven rose to her feet as she ordered the computer to terminate the program.

She held out her hand to B’Elanna, who was still seated on the floor as the skeletal walls of the holodeck materialized just as the pilot seat vanished. “Thank you for your assistance, Lieutenant Torres.”

In the empty space between them, in the long moments as B’Elanna wondered if she wanted to take that hand or not, she vaguely noticed that Seven’s nails were cut too short, the nubs red and pink and inflamed, probably painful if Seven allowed herself to consider it remotely relevant towards her wellbeing. Still, the only thing that B’Elanna could focus on was that piece of composition that hung between them—Seven’s pale imitation of that lonely, solitary cry of Harry’s clarinet that went unanswered because he was alone on the bridge and they were alone in their quarters as they eavesdropped and overheard, never really taking part except, maybe, when they remembered it afterwards because it said something they didn’t know how to say even though Harry could.

“B’Elanna?” Seven’s voice came as if from far away though her outstretched hand stayed still and near. Irrelevant, as she would probably have described the experience. “We need to make our report to the captain.”

She took Seven’s hand, pulled herself to her feet, and followed Seven from the holodeck. The lights in the hallway were dimmed in some vain attempt to simulate the nighttime, as if it wasn’t always night without a sun to call home. Music floated from the bridge on ballerina-tip toes, Harry crooning out a tune she knew from before on his clarinet. She knew this, it was in the tip of her tongue, she’d heard it a long time ago, before she’d even heard of planet earth, something whispering to her from across space and time.

“Klingon opera,” Seven said. She named the artist immediately and B’Elanna thought it wasn’t fair that Seven should know when she had all but forgotten.

B’Elanna paused and stared up towards where the bridge was, several levels above them. She wondered if she were imagining the thud of Harry’s feet supplying a steady heart-drum beat, soon joined by the few other officers who were also on the bridge. She could see them now, sitting at their consoles, their feet pounding against the deck as Harry played and played.

“You don’t seem happy to hear it,” Seven said. Her head was also tilted upwards, and B’Elanna was tempted to ask if she also heard the drumming or if it was only her imagination, echoes of memory when she had been a child.

“It’s complicated.” She shook her head and her shoulders, putting it out of mind as she strode down the hall, forgetting, for a moment, that she had no where to go since it was far too late to make their report. It would have to wait until morning.

Seven of Nine trailed after her, holding the datapads in her palm. B’Elanna slipped into the turbolift, hoping maybe that Seven would take the opportunity to go elsewhere, but she was out of luck. Seven stepped in beside her. She rolled her eyes. Not even at night, after the day was done, was she going to be rid of Seven’s company.

“Where do you want to go?” Seven asked. The doors had whisper-shut behind them but they stood still with no directive given to the computer.

B’Elanna shrugged. “Anywhere I guess.” If she went to her quarters, she knew that she would lie awake with her hands clasped behind her head. If she went to the mess hall, she would probably just get banana pancakes from the replicator and they wouldn’t be as good as the ones she remembered. They would make her miss everything and everyone so much more and she didn’t want to miss people—not today.

“Deck Eight,” Seven told the turbo lift, and the floor shuddered a little under their feet and they were going down. The lift shouldn’t have felt like that. B’Elanna knew because she had boarded this ship when it was young, still on her first voyage in the depths of space. Nothing had felt out of place. Living and breathing on this ship had been like being a cadet again, like when she had first space-walked, when she had first held her breath at the stillness, when danger and death were a whispered promise just outside the fish bowl shape of her helmet.

She reached out to touch the farthest wall of the lift, to see if she could feel something lurking just there beyond sight, when Seven of Nine put her fingertips to her elbow. “I was wondering if you would like to review some data I compiled about strengthening shields for our shuttlecraft.”

Without speaking, B’Elanna took the datapad from Seven’s hand. She barely registered the soft jerk as the turbolift stopped, or how Seven strode its empty doors through the empty halls towards the cargo bay. B’Elanna followed after, at first skimming through the first few sections until Seven got to the nitty gritty science of it all, and then reading it through slowly, savoring the numbers and the theory like a fine meal. She slipped the datapad in her pocket and pulled out one of her own that she had been working on. “Take a look at this, Seven.” It was work that B’Elanna had doodled in order to relax from programming the simulation of the wreck. Coding wasn’t her strong suit and she wasn’t a huge fan of what, exactly, she had been simulating. This had been something to distract her, something to address atmospheric interference with transportation controls so she wouldn’t feel guilty about every spare second not focused on Pade.

It would work well with what Seven had shown her. The theories paired well with each other—fit like puzzle pieces or like gloves or like harmonized duets.

“Interesting,” Seven said.

“Interesting. Huh.” B’Elanna knew that it was actually a high compliment, especially coming from Seven, but at the same time the word didn’t really express the wow factor of their two separate projects combined together. If it had been Harry and Tom, they would have been joshing each other round, one-upping themselves in their compliments. But from Seven of Nine, she received a one-word statement because that was all that was needed.

It wasn’t as if it wouldn’t save another life, perhaps, or something like that.

Seven reached for the control panel embedded in one of the walls, opening the cargo bay. B’Elanna’s skin crawled as she entered Seven’s quarters. Her skin was cast in a sickly green luminescence because she was in Borg territory now. Seven plucked the data pad she had given B’Elanna—“I was still reading that—“ she protested too little, too late, because it didn’t matter—it was already gone from her hand.

It never mattered with Seven.

She brought it to her own computers, some makeshift contraption of human engineering and Borg ingenuity. “The theory is sound,” she announced like she was one of B’Elanna’s old professors back at the Academy, like she always had something to teach or to offer. “But the problem is—“

She launched into the complicated quantum theory of the way that molecules interacted with the transporter beam and the shields used in the shuttlecraft. “Why don’t you flip to section eleven on that datapad I gave you,” B’Elanna said, which was where she had come up with what she thought was a half decent solution for the issue.

Seven paused immediately and went forward, reading the appropriate sections quickly. “I see,” she said. “Sometimes I become—excited.”

“It’s fine,” B’Elanna said. For a moment, she was tempted to tease Seven for succumbing to something so emotional as being excited about something. But it was just such a very nice thing to be, and it was such a hard feeling to find on Voyager these days.

“Your solution will not suffice,” Seven said. “It needs something like—” and she launched into an explanation that had B’Elanna going up to her console with interest, eventually shunting her aside and taking over the controls as B’Elanna pointed out she had already thought of that and here was why it wouldn’t work.

At which point Seven replied by taking control of the console back and coming up with the most outrageous theory that B’Elanna had heard in all her days as a Starfleet officer, because one time a Borg cube tried to do something similar with something resembling success. B’Elanna thought this was a hedgy way to indicate that the cube hadn’t quite blown itself up if she squinted hard enough to read between the lines of Seven’s cool assurance that this absolutely was a viable theory.

“If we’re going to pursue that line of theory,” B’Elanna said, “we’ll certainly need to account for the flux in the gravity because if we don’t we’ll just have transportation locks on the scattered atom bits of our crew.”

“Not if we compensate by adjusting the polarities by a margin of four percent,” Seven said.

B’Elanna opened her mouth to retort, then shut her mouth again. It could work. There was a very good chance that it could, possibly, against all odds, work.

It was at that moment her exhaustion fell over her like a damp, heavy blanket, and she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles until her vision pooled into a blurred Borg green.

“You’re exhausted,” Seven noted. “Perhaps you should retire.”

But B’Elanna knew that her shift in engineering was due to start soon, if not in the more immediate present. “I really can’t. There’s no point now.”

“Coffee then,” Seven said. “Captain Janeway swears by its effectiveness.”

B’Elanna didn’t drink as much coffee as the Captain did, but it sounded like it just might do the trick. So she agreed, and they both went back to the turbolift, back to the mess hall.

Neelix was already puttering around, banging some pots and pans a little louder than was probably necessary. “He does it to wake himself up a little more quickly,” Seven observed quietly, as if she were sharing a secret, and B’Elanna wondered when they had had that conversation, how many nights Seven spent awake, or how many morning Seven rose so early, and what sort of chats she and Neelix had before Seven terminated their discourse.

Neelix greeted them as merrily as he always did—he was very dependable in that way. It was almost impossible for him to get angry with someone (not that he didn’t, of course, he was just very, very, very good at hiding it), and in some ways talking to Neelix was like talking to Seven—except instead of a blank wall of nothing it was a blank wall of cheer.

He assured them he already had a pot of coffee brewing for the captain (he had found some beans that were very much like coffee, and he was hazarding that Janeway wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, which was a bet that B’Elanna wouldn’t have taken because Janeway could always, always tell).

They cradled their hot cups after Neelix brought them their drinks, and B’Elanna noticed how Seven mirrored her as she breathed the smell of it deep into her lungs and her diaphragm. Neelix hadn’t been kidding that it was remarkably similar to coffee, homegrown back on Earth. She sipped it then, and tried hard not to laugh when she saw the face Seven made at its mouth-watering bitterness. Instead, she just nudged some paper packets of sweetener that Neelix kept lying around towards her, and Seven tore them open with deliberate preciseness.

“What do you think?” B’Elanna said when Seven tried it again.

“It is—adequate.” She scrutinized her barely touched cup as if she might find something a little more interesting in the dregs.

“Well, let’s hope the Captain thinks so too.”

B’Elanna didn’t think she imagined the very small smile that played, for an instant, at Seven’s mouth. Then, they lapsed into silence.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, not like the interminable pauses she had expected (and dreaded) to come from Seven. Their datapads were in the center of the table they shared, and Seven of Nine was still looking at the last section, still trying to puzzle out the newest problem that had arisen as they tried to reconcile their ideas.

Maybe they’d never figure it out, and even if they did, it wouldn’t change the fact that it had come too little, too late for Ensign Pade.

That still didn’t change the fact that they were really onto something, and B’Elanna, as she rose to make her shift in engineering while Seven went towards astrometrics, couldn’t help but feel something like satisfaction.


End file.
